Specialist Audience Critique on Facebook

Write the third job in the job request, write 500 words, and the article teacher can help me choose. There are also several references in the article below.

Draft 1 (hard copy) is due in class Sept. 26 for peer editing.

Draft 2 (drop box submission) is due Oct. 3.

The objective for this short assignment is to demonstrate your understanding of the features of writing for a specialist audience – your peers in statistics or actuarial science.  Your paper must be original (that is, not modified from another course) and demonstrate, for example, appropriate language and style choices, conventional organizational structure for a scientific paper (PPDAC or IMRaD), and correct integration of mathematical expressions, tables, charts, graphs, and other suitable visuals.  You are encouraged to find and examine other samples of peer-reviewed journal articles to get a sense of the range of approaches and the general tone.  You may exceed the 500 – 750 word range, which does not include the works cited section or any text included in visual supplements.

Choose ONE of the following five options:

1. Go to Statistics Canada’s Data page (or another online source of data), find a subject that interests you, and compose a short paper analyzing the numbers using a statistical method or methods you have learned in your training.  For example, you might look at cybercrime statistics over the last several years in relation to other variables.  Keep in mind that this is a relatively short assignment, so the analysis does not need to be too intensive.  The paper should begin with a rationale for undertaking the analysis, a brief discussion of the methodology to be applied, a data and results section (including tables and graphs as needed), and a conclusion (discussing, for example, whether any noted correlations are useful or warning against misinterpreting the data).  Remember, I am NOT your audience for this assignment, so there is no need to attempt to “help me understand” the text.  You are writing for your specialist peers.  Remember that your resource librarian, Rebecca Hutchinson, is available to help you; check out her resources in the Library’s Web page.  There is a tab for “data” that you might find useful.

1. Find at least two but preferably three recent academic sources (peer reviewed journal articles) on a subject that interests you and compose a short research paper synthesizing the sources – in other words, showing where the authors corroborate each other’s findings or showing how the sources, taken together, provide a comprehensive discussion of all related factors (for example).  The choice of subjects is extremely broad; find something that is useful to your own learning and preferably something fairly current:  you might, for instance, look at the future of insurance in relation to autonomous vehicles, or the impacts of various current trends (cannabis legalization, vaping, retail sales of alcohol), cyber insurance, sports analytics, blockchain, or anything else you can think of.  If you are interested more in criticism, consider option 4 below, which asks you to critically compare two articles on the same subject.  Keep the language appropriate to your intended audience:  it should be formal, precise, and technical/specialized.  As I mentioned in option 1 above, please remember that your resource librarian has resources available to help you locate research articles.  Cite all information accurately and include your works cited.

1. Find an academic, peer-reviewed article and compose a critical analysis, focusing on content and organization.  Explain how the paper does or does not follow the conventional organizational structure of Problem, Plan, Data, Analysis, and Conclusion (or Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion).  Evaluate the author(s) rationale for undertaking the study.  Demonstrate your statistical literacy by explaining why the author(s) approach is sensible (or not), why their analysis is appropriate (or not), and why the communication of their findings is effective (or not).  Do the authors display any bias?  Say something as well about the effectiveness of the paper’s abstract and its integration of visual supplements such as tables and graphs.  If you are having trouble locating a suitable paper for this assignment, you may use this one:  “Predicting bank financial failures using neural networks, support vector machines and multivariate statistical methods: A comparative analysis in the sample of savings deposit insurance fund (SDIF) transferred banks in Turkey” by Boyacioglu, Kara and Baykan.  If that article doesn’t interest you, consider contacting your math resource librarian for help.

1. Locate two academic articles on the same subject and compose a critical comparison with the objective of determining which paper makes a more compelling argument or contribution to the field.  As part of your critical analysis, consider the same kinds of questions mentioned in option 3 above.

1. 5.      Compose a proposal to collect data for scientific research.  This proposal must demonstrate an understanding of the policies set out by the Office of Research at the University of Waterloo, particularly with respect to ethics.  Keeping in mind that you will not actually carry out this research, discuss your rationale for the proposed study, justify the methods you would use to collect and analyze the data, and provide a time frame for the project.  Excellent proposals will also provide some research validation – for example, citing a couple of sources that indicate that the problem or issue needs to be addressed through statistical research.  Again, keep in mind that this proposal option is meant as a course assignment, not as the preliminary step for an actual research study; any plan you have to actually carry out the study in the future would require Office of Research clearance!  Put another way, there shall be no collection of data from human participants in this course!

Other assignment considerations:

• double space your writing


• write concisely, and always with your intended audience in mind:  specialists


• acknowledge all ideas from sources:  use quotation marks for word-for-word quotations, and provide in-text citations.  Provide citations also for content that is paraphrased


• provide a full works cited at the end of your document


• organize your document with headings where appropriate to improve readability


• proof read your work carefully before submitting it